


The Jägercat: A Mechanicsburg Bedtime Story

by baroque_mongoose



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Cats, Gen, Undead, it's not as gory as it sounds, jägerdraught
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 19:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12871608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baroque_mongoose/pseuds/baroque_mongoose
Summary: It wasn't just humans who drank the Jägerdraught.





	The Jägercat: A Mechanicsburg Bedtime Story

Once upon a time, Robur Heterodyne had a cat.

Well, as a matter of fact, Lord Robur had quite a lot of cats, because he liked them. Even the most deranged and bloodthirsty among the Heterodynes has always had one good streak somewhere, and in Lord Robur’s case it was cats. Lord Robur’s cats all slept on velvet pillows and feasted on… umm…

Yes, Jutta. Very probably the brains of Lord Robur’s enemies. And what is that you have under the covers?

Well, sit him on the bedside table. You know you can’t take your Jägerdoll to bed with you. You could hurt yourself on his claws. That’s right. Just move the talking Castle model and the mini ballista, and there’ll be plenty of room for him. Now, where were we?

Oh, yes. Thank you, Juppi. Lord Robur’s cat. She was ginger, which was quite unusual for a lady cat, and her name was Heidi; and she was quite small and dainty, but nonetheless she was an exceptionally good mouser. No mouse would dare set foot in Castle Heterodyne…

...that was _different_ , Jutta. And I’m sure it would have been beneath Lord Robur to kill the mice himself…

...yes, I suppose he might have invented a special clank to do it, but he didn’t, so can we please get on with the story?

One day, Lord Robur happened to be in an especially foul mood. He also had a new weapon he wanted to test. Consequently, he struck several of his minions dead on the spot…

...because they paid very well, Juppi. And because they had a very generous life assurance scheme for their minions. That way, if anyone died, the relatives wouldn’t complain too much…

...yes, indeed, Jutta. Some families did indeed send their more troublesome relatives off to work for the Heterodyne. If they lived, they were out of mischief and they’d never have to look for another job, and if they died, well, it was a pity, but there was the money. But, listen, that’s an aside. I was telling you about Heidi the Heterodyne Cat.

...I know. But it’s relevant. If you’ll just keep quiet and listen, you’ll see.

Normally, that would have made very little difference to Heidi or any of the other cats, apart from the fact that they might have got extra brains that evening. But it so happened that one of those unfortunate minions had been carrying a flask when she was struck down, and in that flask were the last few drops of Jägerdraught from the latest Jäger-creating session. They splashed on the stone flags, unnoticed by the two other minions who came to drag the body away; and the next creature to pass the scene of that poor minion’s death was Heidi.

Heidi twitched her delicate little nostrils. She could smell a variety of scents, mostly familiar ones, but there was one among them that she had never smelt before. She sniffed, and soon she found the little puddle of liquid, almost unnoticed among all the blood. Someone would be along with a mop soon, so she did not have long to investigate.

It smelt… delicious.

As far as she was concerned, the other cats could have the blood if they wanted it. Heidi had never liked human blood; and this, as we shall soon see, was just as well. Eagerly, she licked up the puddle of Jägerdraught until the area where it had been was quite clean. It tasted even better than it smelt.

What was that, Juppi? Oh – but she was a cat, remember. Something that tastes foul to humans may taste wonderful to a cat. After all, you don’t like liver, but most cats do.

Yes, Jutta, I know you like liver. No, that doesn’t make you a cat. Could we please carry on?

Hardly had Heidi raised her head to look round than she started to feel very unwell. There was only one thing for it: she needed to go and find a nice warm quiet place, curl up, and try to sleep. Finding a warm place was not a problem, but finding a quiet one was rather more of a challenge. Even if she could get far enough from Lord Robur not to be able to hear him shouting, there was always the Castle. Wherever she went, it seemed to be booming at someone. But, in the end, she found a little nook close to one of the boilers that was about as good for the purpose as she could get, and there she curled up, shivering.

She was not sure that she would ever manage to sleep; so she was quite astonished when she woke up several hours later, feeling not only much better, but much better than she had ever done before in her life. She felt strong and energetic. She felt that she could go outside right now and bring down the nearest ox.

She looked down at her claws. She blinked. She looked again.

They were still retractable, but they were longer than they had any right to be; her front paws were suddenly huge, but there still didn’t appear to be any room for those magnificent claws to retract. Nonetheless, they did, sliding in and out with just as much ease as they had always done. They were as sharp as knives, and they gleamed. Her fur was still ginger, but now it was ticked with gold; not simply blonde, for that too glittered in the light, but probably not the actual metal, for it did not weigh her fur down in any way.

And she was big. So big… She uncurled herself, wriggling awkwardly out of her little nook. At a good guess, she was now about five times her previous size, as big as a medium-sized dog. And… wait. There was something on her back that hadn’t been there before. She moved it experimentally.

Wings. She had wings.

So, she was big, strong, full of energy, winged… and _hungry_. A mouse would still make a tasty snack, but she’d have to catch several of them now to make a decent meal, and that would take too long. But now, she realised, she could go after rats; even the huge ones that lived in the cellars and sometimes made off with a whole joint of ham from the pantry in the middle of the night. Yes, she thought. I shall catch some rats.

She did a little flight practice in one of the ballrooms before going down to the cellars in search of prey. Her new wings were covered in gold-tipped fur like the rest of her, and they were well protected with further retractable claws that could emerge, if necessary, from the ends of the supporting bones and come out at the front of the wing. She found that she could use these claws to grip the top edge of a picture frame, dado rail, or other high ledge, while bracing herself against the wall with her back legs; that would leave her front claws free to hold prey. Flying past a mirror, she caught a reflection of herself and nearly fell out of the air with shock. She was still recognisably a cat, but… those fangs! Truly, a lion or tiger would have been envious. She swooped and banked in the air as if she had been doing it all her life. Hah. No lion or tiger could do _that_.

Out into the corridor she flew, down the nearest set of steps, and through the gap over the door to the cellars; it had once been a transom, but the glass had been broken when the Castle got into an argument with some past Heterodyne, and nobody had ever bothered to replace it. That door was no great obstacle even to an ordinary cat, since it was easy enough to climb; but no cat with any sense at all went into the cellars. There were things in there that scared even the human minions.

Heidi was not lacking in sense; on the other hand, she was no longer an ordinary cat, and those wings made her very fast. She was fairly certain that anything she couldn’t outfight, she could outfly. So, into the cellars she went.

There were plenty of rats. In the past, she would have avoided trying to deal with any of them because they were bigger than she was. That was no longer the case; and, besides, they couldn’t even get close enough to her to fight her properly. Those shiny new claws were so long that they were effectively a ranged weapon, at any rate when it came to attacking rats; and, of course, the rats couldn’t fly. Heidi killed and ate a couple of them without anything that could reasonably be called a fight, then killed a few more just because she could. She was, after all, a Heterodyne cat.

Soon, however, she grew bored with killing rats. It was just too easy now. Leaving the surviving rats cowering in holes behind her, she flew off deeper into the cellars to see what else she could find. There were plenty of stories, after all, and they must be based on something. Surely there would be something to fight in there that would prove to be a more interesting challenge.

She found a group of vampires playing a complicated card game. When they saw her, they smiled at her just like Lord Robur did, so she landed on the shoulder of one of them and purred in his ear. It was hard to do that without spiking the vampire, but he didn’t seem to mind. He stroked her behind the ears, which was her favourite place, and she purred so loudly that the cards on the table started to vibrate. She let them all make a fuss of her until she was bored with that too, and then she flew off again. She knew where they lived now. She could always come and have a fuss down here any time Lord Robur was too busy.

It really was interesting down here; there was so much to discover. There were innumerable rats, of course, all she could ever possibly eat. There were other vampires, who were, without exception, friendly. There were much weirder creatures too, failed experiments intended for use in battle or the defence of the Castle, who now roamed the cellars disconsolately and preyed on the rats. Heidi sensibly hesitated to attack any of these. They weren’t normal creatures, not even by the somewhat relaxed standards of the cellars of Castle Heterodyne. Many were the only one of their kind as far as she could discover, and all of them, having been assembled in a spark laboratory from the Great Cat alone knew what, were potentially venomous. In fact Heidi was now highly resistant to most types of poison, but she had no way of knowing that and did not intend to find out the hard way.

And then… she found the challenge she had been seeking.

It was another rat, and therefore a legitimate target; but it was not like the others. Technically, this one was already dead, and from the smell of it, it had been for some time; however, it wasn’t letting technicalities bother it in the least. How it could see through its dulled, pupilless eyes was a mystery, but it apparently could see, since it turned its decaying head to look as soon as Heidi’s golden wings brushed across the edge of its field of vision. It was huge, nearly as big as Heidi herself; and its long yellow fangs looked as though they had been growing ever since it died.

It made a jarring, rattling noise which was probably its equivalent of a squeak. It was the sort of noise that would have had the boldest minion turning tail and running for the stairs for dear life. Even Heidi quailed a little, but she stood (or, rather, hovered) her ground and sized the creature up. Granted, it was large, vicious, and terrifying; and, being undead, it was not going to be easy to finish it off properly. But she did have a huge aerial advantage, and quick enough wits to use it to full effect.

It jumped at her, and missed. Zombie or not, it was as fast as a normal rat, but if it thought it could fight her in the air, it was going to be much easier to deal with than it looked. It landed fairly gracefully, planted its feet squarely, and raised its fangs into the air. Clearly it was not going to make that mistake twice.

The battle was swift and furious…

...no, Jutta, I don’t know what colour its blood was. And no, I’m not going to give you all the gory details, or you’ll have nightmares.

Well, all right, then. Your brother will have nightmares. Can we continue?

The battle, as I have just said, was swift and furious. Zombies are hard to kill, even if you are Heidi the beautiful golden-winged Jägercat. In the end, however, by dint of a combination of aerial advantage and sheer persistence, she managed it; and, once it lay still, she settled down a little way away and started to lick her wounds. They seemed to be healing much faster than they had done in the past. Well, now, that was useful, especially if there happened to be any more zombie rats in the cellars.

It might be a rat, but Heidi was sensible enough to understand that this did not necessarily mean it was edible. She was rather hungry again after her exertions, but she decided to go and satisfy her hunger with a normal rat before coming back and deciding what to do with this one. And so she went hunting again; in fact, it turned out that she was so hungry that she ate two, but that was not a problem. There was never going to be any shortage of rats down here.

By the time she had eaten the two rats, she had come to a decision. Lord Robur was always very nice to her, so she would take him the zombie rat as a special present. She picked it up in her claws – an easy task, with her new strength – and flew off with it back to the upper reaches of the Castle. There was no sign of Lord Robur anywhere; perhaps he was in his laboratory, or out terrorising the townsfolk, or just simply getting blind drunk at Mamma Gkika’s. From Heidi’s point of view, it mattered little. The door to his chamber was locked, but that was no problem, since she knew he always slept with the window open. She went out, flew round a little until she found the right window, flew in, and laid the remains of the zombie rat proudly in the middle of his gold-embroidered counterpane…

...yes, Juppi. And, indeed, serve him jolly well right. In fact, you’ve anticipated me, since that is said to be the one occasion in his entire life when Robur Heterodyne was actually grossed out.

You’d have done _what_ with it, Jutta?

You know… there are times when I really worry about you.

**Author's Note:**

> There really was a little ginger cat called Heidi who was an excellent mouser, but naturally she didn't belong to Robur Heterodyne. She was my cat. At the age of seventeen she went off hunting and never came back, and I suspect, since there were foxes nearby, that she probably tangled with one of those.
> 
> Well... now I've immortalised her, in a way. I think she'd have loved having wings. :-)


End file.
